The First Taste

Alright first things first - RIP Lucy, my dog at home. You'll be missed, but then I expected this and I'm glad I said goodbye before leaving the states.

Also - GO SOX



In an unrelated development, shortly after receiving that news we got a dog here. It's of the Malian type, flea-bitten and tick-infested, but it's a puppy and it's wicked cute. When I asked my little brother Dao what it's name was (since it appeared to be his, even though it's really just a guard dog - they don't so much keep dogs as pets here as they keep them as appliances), he replied Wuludeni (translaton: "little dog child" - they don't normally name their dogs either). I insisted that he name it though, so now we have both Dao Belebeleba and Dao Fitini (Big Dao and Little Dao).



So i recieved quite a shock last week when discussing family relations with my host-father. By his reckoning, I'm older than my host-mother Awa, who's 22. I'm somewhat skeptical of this, since I had thought her in her 30s (Danger himself is 45), and Malians don't seem to pay a whole lat of attention to age - every time I ask it's something different. More shocking though, is that my two host-sisters Odile and Heidi aren't host-sisters at all. They're both 13 (or 15 depending on the time of day), and Odile is Awa's younger sister, which makes her my host-aunt. Heidi is their cousin, which makes her... well I'm not sure. Heidi apparently has been with Danger and Awa for 2 years now - both her parents are dead, and she lived with a mean aunt for 5 years (who didn't let her go to school, among other things) before an older aunt (Awa?) decided she was better off here. Because she never attended school, when she arrived here she only spoke Bobo, and had to learn Bambara (Awa, of course, speaks Bobo as well). Sinc she's a long way past the age for starting school, she hasn't.



Odile, on the other hand, is in the 7th year at school - she did the first 6 in her Bobo village, but they don't have anything beyond that so she had to come in to town to continue her studies, as of last year. Since she'd been to school she already spoke Bambara when she arrived. Lassinan also lives with us, though I'm unsure of his relation. There's an exit exam for the 7th and 9th years at school, and he's taken the 9th year exam 3 times, but hasn't been able to pass it yet.

Anyway last Saturday I went to a dance party out at site - more than a little intimidating at first, just me and a room full of dancing Malians. They had big stack concert speakers, a DJ (contemporary West African dance music, not traditional) a few strings of Christmas lights, and powered the whole thing with a generator outside. No alcohol was served - only sodas - so I couldn't have a beer or two to loosen up. Regardless, it was easily one of the most fun dance parties I've ever been to, which is saying a lot after New York. I even made a rather cute new Malian friend, but wouldn't you know it - she works for the Red Cross in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, and won't be able to come back to town until January, when I'll be in Bamako. Such is life!